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Black Lives Matter Toronto’s demand to ban uniformed police might seem like exclusion. In reality, old-school discrimination is still driving the denial of the activism of queer black people.

Members of Black Lives Matter brought the annual Pride parade to a halt last July, demanding, among other things, the removal of police floats from future parades. (Steve Russell / Toronto Star File Photo)

If you are ever lost, I tell my little ones, look for the police and go to them.

For many fortunate Torontonians, the sight of a police officer fosters a sense of security and safety.

If the police cause me some apprehension it’s while I’m driving, when the sight of a cruiser sends my glance flying to the speedometer. I assume I will be stopped if I’m driving too fast, or don’t have the licence sticker updated — basically, if I’m in the wrong. I don’t expect to be stopped otherwise, and I haven’t been.

I’m not white, but I have enough privilege that I don’t experience police like a black person does.

It bears repeating that it is common for black people to be stopped, questioned and documented while driving, walking or otherwise, even if they have done nothing wrong, and to be punished more harshly than whites if they have done wrong. The same is true for indigenous people, but the statistics on blacks are relevant here.

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Blacks made up 8.3 per cent of Toronto’s population, but accounted for 25 per cent of the cards police filled out after questioning them between 2008 and mid-2011, a Toronto Star analysis found.

Harsher minimum-sentencing laws also target low-level crimes by people who are then criminalized and punished.

“Name any essentially similar offence and the case law always seems to find it more serious when a black man commits it,” Toronto criminal lawyer Reid Rusonik told the Star in 2013.

This has led to a breakdown of trust between Toronto’s law keepers and the city’s black population, something that police know and acknowledge.

Yet, when Black Lives Matter Toronto — a grassroots movement reviled and admired in equal measure — brought last year’s gay Pride Parade to a halt with a list of demands, including the banning of police floats from the parade, the conversation among opponents quickly spiraled into cries of discrimination.

An open letter to Pride from a gay police officer went viral.

“I speak as an individual, one who saw his first Pride, only to be excluded from the next,” Chuck Krangle wrote. “Exclusion does not promote inclusion.”

One can’t argue with Krangle’s positive experience with the police force. That said, BLM’s opposition is not to individuals like Krangle, but to the institution he represents. He is not being excluded from next year’s Pride, he is being asked not to show up in uniform. One can’t argue with black people’s negative experiences with police, either.

BLM’s stance belongs to the continuum of resistance that is at the root of Pride. The city’s Pride Parade sprang up from protests against police raids that saw about 300 gays arrested in 1981. It took almost two decades after that for a uniformed police officer to walk in the parade. The first Toronto Police Service float appeared only in 2014.

In that intervening period, was the lack of police presence called exclusion or discrimination?

Obviously not — the power dynamics between an armed, uniformed, institutionalized force and a grassroots grouping of pariahs would have made accusations of reverse discrimination laughable. One was formed out of protest to the other. The inherent tension did not warrant an inclusion of the perpetrator and executor of inequality.

There are hierarchies in inequality. Just because the walls have crumbled between police and one kind of LGBTQ2 people does not mean they have fallen altogether. Krangle may not have been discriminated against by police, but the same cannot be said for his contemporaries of colour.

Even prominent gays, like Ontario’s premier Kathleen Wynne, don’t seem to get this. Discomfort with BLM’s demand to ban uniformed police participation suggests that now that white LGBTQ2 rights have been respected, the rights of queer black people don’t matter.

A sub-section of the group is being expected to march in solidarity with those who wield the tools of their oppression.

Toronto Police, meanwhile, aware of the unexpected public sympathy on this score, are playing the role of underdog.

“It’s extremely confusing,” Toronto Police spokesperson Mark Pugash told the Star on Wednesday. Nobody from Pride had yet told them how a vote to endorse BLM’s demands would affect their presence, he said.

If the police are as serious about engagement and building bridges with black LGBTQ2 communities as they say they are, they shouldn’t wait for Pride Toronto to weigh in when they meet in February. They need to swallow their pride and take a principled stand: excuse themselves from participating in uniform, but pledge to be present professionally to keep it safe, as they would with any mass public event.

They may have worked hard to improve relationships with the gay community, but clearly, the work is not done.

They should stay out until they are welcomed back in by all groups.

It’s only when they treat everyone equally can we truly say all lives do matter.

Shree Paradkar tackles issues of race and gender. You can follow her @shreeparadkar

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